Arlene Peterson was standing with her back to the sink, holding her considerable belly and nearly screaming with laughter. Her face had gone bright red, as if she were running a high fever. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

“Ma?” Ollie asked. “What the hell?”

Although the dishes had been cleared from the living room and den, there was still a ton of work to be done here. There were two counters on either side of the sink, and a table in the kitchen nook, where the Peterson family had taken most of their evening meals. All these surfaces were loaded with partially eaten casseroles, Tupperware containers, and leftovers wrapped in aluminum foil. Resting on top of the stove was the carcass of a partially eaten chicken and a gravy boat full of congealed brown sludge.

“We’ve got enough leftovers for a month!” Arlene managed. She doubled over, guffawing, then straightened up. Her cheeks had turned purple. Her red hair, which she had bequeathed to both the son standing before her and the one now underground, had come loose from the clips with which she had temporarily tamed it, and now stood out around her congested face in a frizzy corona. “Bad news, Frankie’s dead! Good news, I won’t have to go shopping for a long . . . long . . . time!”

She began to howl. It was a sound that belonged in an insane asylum, not in their kitchen. Fred told his legs to move, to go to her and embrace her, but at first they wouldn’t obey. It was Ollie who moved, but before he could get to her, Arlene picked up the chicken and threw it. Ollie ducked. The chicken flew end over end, shedding stuffing, and hit the wall with a horrible crunch-splat. It left a circle of grease on the wallpaper below the clock.

“Mom, stop. Stop it.”

Ollie tried to take her by the shoulders and pull her into a hug, but Arlene slipped under his hands and darted toward one of the counters, still laughing and howling. She grabbed a serving dish of lasagna in both hands—it had been brought by one of Father Brixton’s sycophants—and dumped it on her head. Cold pasta fell into her hair and onto her shoulders. She heaved the dish into the living room.

“Frankie is dead and we’ve got a fucking Italian buffet!”

Fred got moving then, but Arlene slid away from him, too. She was laughing like an overexcited girl playing a spirited game of tag. She grabbed a Tupperware container full of Marshmallow Delite. She started to raise it, then dropped it between her feet. The laughter stopped. One hand cupped her large left breast. The other lay flat on her chest above it. She looked at her husband with wide eyes that were still swimming with tears.

Those eyes, Fred thought. Those are what I fell in love with.

“Mom? Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said, and then: “I think my heart.” She bent to look at the chicken and the marshmallow dessert. Pasta fell from her hair. “Look what I did.”

She gave a long, whooping, rattling gasp. Fred grabbed her, but she was too heavy, and slithered through his arms. Before she went down on her side, Fred saw that the color was already fading from her cheeks.

Ollie screamed and dropped to his knees beside her. “Mom! Mom! Mom!” He looked up at his father. “I don’t think she’s breathing!”

Fred pushed his son aside. “Call 911.”

Without looking to see if Ollie was doing it, Fred slipped a hand around his wife’s big neck, feeling for a pulse. He got one, but it was disorganized, chaotic: beat-beat, beatbeatbeat, beat-beatbeat. He straddled her, gripped his left wrist in his right hand, and began to push down in a steady rhythm. Was he doing it right? Was it even CPR? He didn’t know, but when her eyes opened, his own heart seemed to give an upward leap in his chest. There she was, she was back.

It wasn’t really a heart attack. She overexerted herself, that’s all. Fainted. I think they call that a syncope. But we’re getting you on a diet, my dear, and your birthday present is going to be one of those wristbands that measure your—

“Made a mess,” Arlene whispered. “Sorry.”

“Don’t try to talk.”

Ollie was on their kitchen wall phone, talking fast and loud, almost shouting. Giving their address. Telling them to hurry.

“You’ll have to clean up the living room again,” she said. “I’m sorry. Fred, I’m so, so sorry.”

Before Fred could tell her again to stop talking, to just lie still until she felt better, Arlene drew another of those great, rattling breaths. As she let it out, her eyes rolled up in her head. The bloodshot whites bulged, turning her into a horror-movie deathmask Fred would afterwards try to erase from his mind. He would fail.

“Dad? They’re on their way. Is she all right?”

Fred didn’t reply. He was too busy applying more half-assed CPR and wishing he had taken a class—why had he never found time to do that? There were so many things he wished for. He would have traded his immortal soul to be able to turn the calendar back one lousy week.

Press and release. Press and release.

You’ll be all right, he told her. You have to be all right. Sorry cannot be your last word on this earth. I will not allow it.

Press and release. Press and release.

5

Marcy Maitland was glad to take Grace into bed with her when Grace asked, but when she asked Sarah if she wanted to join them, her older daughter shook her head.

“All right,” Marcy said, “but if you change your mind, I’ll be here.”

An hour passed, then another. The worst Saturday of her life became the worst Sunday. She thought of Terry, who should have been beside her now, fast asleep (perhaps dreaming about the upcoming City League championship, now that the Bears had been disposed of), and was instead in a jail cell. Was he also awake? Of course he was.

She knew there were going to be some hard days ahead, but Howie would put things right. Terry had once told her that his old Pop Warner co-coach was the best defense lawyer in the southwest, and might someday sit on the state’s supreme court. Given Terry’s cast-iron alibi, there was no way Howie could fail. But each time she drew almost enough comfort from this idea to drop off, she thought of Ralph Anderson, the Judas sonofabitch she’d thought of as a friend, and she came wide awake again. As soon as this was over, they would sue the Flint City PD for false arrest, defamation of character, anything else Howie Gold could think of, and when Howie began dropping his legal smart-bombs, she would make sure Ralph Anderson was standing on ground zero. Could they sue him personally? Strip him of everything he owned? She hoped so. She hoped they could send him, his wife, and the son with whom Terry had taken such pains, out into the street, barefoot and dressed in rags, with begging bowls in their hands. She guessed such things were not likely in this advanced and supposedly enlightened day and age, but she could see the three of them that way with utter clarity—mendicants in the streets of Flint City—and each time she did, the vision brought her wide awake again, vibrating with rage and satisfaction.

It was quarter past two by the clock on the nightstand when her older daughter appeared in the doorway, only her legs clearly visible below the oversized Okie City Thunder tee she wore as a nightshirt.

“Mom? Are you awake?”

“I am.”

“Can I get in with you and Gracie?”

Marcy threw back the sheet and moved over. Sarah got in, and when Marcy hugged her and kissed the nape of her neck, Sarah began to cry.